Profit Motive td-48

by Warren Murphy

"You mean I'm not important, Grandpapa?"

  "Not as important as this call I'm waiting for."

  "Grandpapa, I am in the greatest revolution of all time, where the wealth of the West has been transferred to a Third World country. Now, that is important," she said.

  Bradford understood what she meant by a transfer of wealth. That meant little old ladies in Maine keeping their homes at 60 degrees in the dead of winter and paying ten times as much for their heat anyway. When a Wakefield referred to the wealth of the West that had to be shared with developing countries, it was not Wakefield wealth but the single homes of middle-class families, the long summer vacations by car, people's color television sets, and inexpensive and abundant food. This was the transfer of wealth they were talking

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  about. OPEC profits just made the Wakefield fortune larger.

  "Melody, I regret that the transfer of wealth from the West might be our own wealth if you don't hang up."

  The phone clicked as dead as if it had been cut by a razor blade. Melody was a good girl, her grandfather thought. She was only trying to do for the Arabs what her earlier book had done for the Vietnamese and Cambodians, when she proved beyond argument that the only thing wrong with those countries was American's presence in them.

  When America had left and the Cambodian communists engaged in a population slaughter unseen since Adolf Hitler, The Blade, through Melody Wakefield's typewriter, proved that it was not the communists' fault for the killing, but America's because America had bombed that country years before.

  When the Vietnamese took to the boats to escape their "liberators" from the north, The Blade proved that boat people weren't really Vietnamese at all, but Chinese money lenders. Melody's poisoned pen led the attack.

  Melody loved revolutionary discipline for the masses and sometimes, Bradford knew, she only went to these countries to watch revolutionary discipline in action. She had her own whip for revolutionary discipline. She carried it in her traveling bags or sometimes stuffed into her high leather boots.

  Bradford looked at his watch. It was four P.M. and still no call. He went to his stone patio to look out over his own rocky shoreline of Mamtasket. He paced until four-thirty p.m., when his stomach started heaving.

  The paper had been trying to reach him for an hour, but that wasn't the phone call he wanted. The paper phoned again. And when Bradford ordered his butler to tell his newspaper not to bother him anymore, the butler said it was about a killing.

  "What?" said Wakefield. "Give me the phone."

  The managing editor told him there had been a 73

  racial killing near MUT, across the river from Boston. Two blacks had been found murdered, stuffed into a trash cart and left along Memorial Drive.

  "Did one of them ... did one of them . . ." said Bradford, his voice choking, his legs becoming weak. "Did one of them have very large hands?"

  "Yes. He was identified as the civil rights activist who only wanted freedom for his people—Bubba. We helped get him out of the racist oppressor jail."

  Bradford felt weak. He hadn't felt so weak since a Jew and Catholic and somebody from Ohio had tried to move into Mamtasket.

  He hadn't minded the Jew. He was quiet and could be ignored. The Catholic was in industrialist who was called "the rapacious beast of Wall Street," so he and Bradford had something in common. But the family from Ohio laughed loudly and sang songs. Right out in the open. One of them ate a hot dog on a bun, and the father had been raised on a farm where they grew things. They went to football games. And none of the games was Harvard. Their youngest daughter had those big Midwest things on her chest called breasts. No Wakefields had them. They had decent old line New England breasts. Egg size. Fried egg.

  Bradford hung op on his editor and shakily made his way into his study and phoned the one person he hated to give bad news to.

  "Hello," said Friend at the other end of the line.

  "The initial attempt on the two new scientists failed," said Wakefield.

  "Fine," said Friend cheerily.

  "You're not bothered?"

  "No."

  "But I thought you didn't allow failure."

  "Not at all. How foolish I would be if I insisted on perfection. Do you know how unreal that is?"

  "Then you have a contingency plan for a second attempt?"

  "Of course," said Friend.

  That was the beautiful thing about Friend. He never 74

  panicked. And he always had answers and orders immediately.

  "First, you will find out everything about the way your two workers died. Then you will head north on your boat until you are outside Kennebunkport, Maine. And you will wait there."

  "We aren't going to get those two now?"

  "We are going to follow directions, Bradford."

  "Yes, Friend," said Bradford Wakefield HI.

  The reports from his newspaper on the black men's deaths weakened Bradford's stomach even more. He was so upset, he had to drink enriched baby formula and mush.

  The two men found in the refuse cart could not have been killed by human means, the coroner said. The killings were just too precise for human hands. The large one was strangled, and while that required inhuman strength, it was not nearly so much as the strength that would have been required just to hold the big one in place for strangling.

  The conclusion—he had been killed with something that worked like an extra-strong forklift and baling machine.

  The smaller one was killed with a blow so precise, it would make a surgeon jealous. No human killer could have been that accurate.

  The conclusion—death by forces unknown.

  Bradford Wakefield had been anchored off the coast of Maine for two days when a small fishing trawler approached his yacht.

  A man barely over five feet tall came aboard the yacht. He wore a three-piece summer suit and wire-rimmed glasses, and he did not smile. He did not offer his right hand to shake, either.

  His name was Merton, and he did not give his last name. He spoke in a British accent and seemed to know everything there was to know about Bradford Wakefield III, his physical health and, more importantly, some of his relationship with Friend.

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  "You know Friend?" asked Wakefield. "Yes, I do."

  Merton seemed to be able to sit on the frail wooden deck chair with hardly any pressure. For a moment, Bradford thought he was entertaining a robot. Passing Merton's chair to go to the railing, Wakefield touched the Englishman. But the flesh was warm and human. No robot.

  Merton smiled inwardly. People often did that to him. They would sense a lack of human response and then try to touch him, It did not bother him on occasions like this, but it did bother him in his personal life. His son had once said to him, "Are you my natural father, sir?"

  "Yes, I am," Merton had said. "Why did you ask?" "Because, sir, I have read in biology that during copulation, people emit sounds of joy and secrete bodily fluids." "That is correct."

  "I cannot imagine you, sir, doing those things." "Quite," said Merton, trying to remember the time he had copulated with his wife, Lady Wissex. He tried to remember if he perspired. He didn't think he had. But one didn't think about those things at a time like that.

  Instead, Lord Wissex had thought about completing his orgasm and removing himself from Lady Wissex. When he found out she had indeed conceived, he sent her a little silver garden bucket with a note reading: "Good show. You've done your duty and I've done mine. We'll never have to go through that again."

  His son also said to him once, "I wonder, sir, how you have been so able to restore our family fortune. From what I have studied of our history, your father left you almost penniless." "I do work, boy." "What work, sir?"

  "The sort of work our family did to earn its title." "But, sir," the boy said, "that was murdering Catholics for King Henry."

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  "Quite," said Merton.

  "You kill Catholics, sir?" asked the boy incredulously. "For the government?"


  "Of course not. These are modern times. We don't practice that sort of religious prejudice anymore. And we're not bloody civil servants, no matter what others may think. Someone has found me who appreciates skill at the highest level. Not British, but he's a decent enough sort."

  "Is it possible to be not British, but decent, sir?" his son asked.

  "I think so. Never met the chap, but I think he has the soul of royalty. Actually, he sounds American," said Lord Wissex.

  So Merton Lord Wissex this day found himself on an American's yacht off the Maine coast, with the American upset by the Briton's cool nature. The American, of course, did not know Merton was of the peerage. It really wouldn't matter anyhow. Merton Lord Wissex did not intend to know the chap long.

  "Is that all the information you have about how you lost your two operatives?" Merton asked.

  "All? You've taken four pages of notes," said Wakefield.

  "Quite so. I wonder if I might trouble you for a spot of tea."

  "Of course," said Bradford.

  Wakefield decided that he hated this man, and it took him a moment to figure out why. This man called Merton actually was condescending to him. How could anyone condescend to a Wakefield? It was for a Wake- .. field to condescend.

  The tea came with one of the stewards.

  "You're not having tea," said the Briton.

  " 'Course I'm having tea," said Bradford. "I always have tea. I have the best teas in the world available to me. Better than Britain."

  "How nice," said Merton.

  "I take it you have known Friend long?" Wakefield asked.

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  "That depends on what one considers long."

  "I consider an hour long if one has to be with someone who is condescending," said Bradford. "You know, I gave you an awful lot of information. I don't see how you can call it inadequate."

  "Hmmmm," said Merton.

  "Name one question I didn't answer."

  "How were your people killed?"

  "I told you," said Wakefield.

  "No, you didn't. You just described in detail the result. But we have no idea what killed them. Or how."

  "Those two phony scientists."

  "Seems a bit more than a scientist would do, what?"

  "They're not scientists," Wakefield said. "They must be somebody's agents."

  "Obviously," said Merton.

  "So they did the killing."

  "But how, Mr. Wakefield? How?"

  "Effectively, obviously. If Friend would send me^ some more operatives instead of someone so obviously not an operative, I would have those scientists finished. Let me tell you this, Merton. I ran this operation to perfection until this point. And I resent your coming in here to push papers around and write reports."

  "Why are you so sure I am not an operative, as you put it?"

  "Look at you. Not enough meat on you to dress a coat rack," said Bradford. He liked that. He drank from his teacup. The tea was a bit too sweet. So sweet it burned his throat.

  "Why aren't you drinking?" asked Bradford.

  "Because it's poisoned. I poisoned the whole batch."

  "Rubbish. I didn't see you go anywhere near the pot," said Wakefield.

  "That's right. You're not supposed to see me go anywhere near the pot because if you did see me, old boy, you might not drink the tea, and then I would have to cut your throat. I prefer the least amount of violence. Even though I would cut your throat if I had to."

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  "You couldn't have poisoned me and be so casual," said Wakefield. "Now, I could do it. But not you. You know why, little man? Because we had to rescue you during World War I and World War II. That's why. You think you're better than everyone else but you're not. You know why? I'll tell you why. Because we Wakefields are better than everyone else, that's why. And both of us can't be."

  The sun was setting early this day on the yacht. Darkness was coming to Bradford's eyes. His fingertips felt numb. The burning began to tear at his throat. His stomach moved in strange ways.

  But he wasn't going to show that twerp Merton that he was suffering. He was going to smile through the whole thing. And then an idea struck him, that last brilliant Wakefield idea.

  He whispered to the little twerp.

  "You'll never win, you know. They beat everyone," he said, and then he smiled.

  "Bluffs don't suit you well, colonial," said Merton.

  "I know now. Nobody can defeat them. Only sorry I won't be here to see them put you in your place, bloody English twerp."

  Merton Lord Wissex watched the beefy American expire and then neatly emptied the teapot overboard, helped the corpse into a deck chair, and then washed out the teacups himself. He tied the chap's tie, walked up to the bridge of the yacht, chatted amiably with the captain about tides, got behind him when the captain showed him the sextant, broke captain's neck with a short karate chop, broke first mate's neck with similar chop, straightened own tie, left bridge, debarked Wakefield yacht, entered rented trawler, returned to American coast, poisoned trawler captain with laced glass of stout so there would be no identification, phoned Friend informing him of possible trouble, then in boarding room of American hostelry sat down to write a long and deep letter to his son on the importance of good manners.

  He started it five times, each time throwing away the 79

  first page. He just couldn't quite get through to the boy how utterly important manners were.

  Without manners, he wrote finally, man is a beast.

  Chambermaid entered room, discovered gun paraphernalia and had to be removed. And was. Suffocation.

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  Chapter Five

  On the mountain road that divides the island of St. Maarten's in the Dutch West Indies, Peter John, an upright man with a small herd of cows and a farm that through his courage fed a large family on but two acres, could not start his car.

  He was a religious man, and he took the little setback with joyful calm. These were things of üfe. But within one day, because he could not start his car, a president of the United States would face the most horrifying decision of his life and do what he had vowed no president of the United States would ever have to do again.

  And because Peter John could not start his car, assassins would fly into his little island to settle a centuries-old feud, and a computer chip would continue advancing toward its greatest profit venture ever, even if it meant the end of the civilized world.

  Four times Peter John pressed the accelerator of his Ford station wagon, and four times there was nothing. Not even a cough.

  "Betty, you naughty girl, you start now, precious," Peter John said to his station wagon. He talked to his car the way he talked to his animals. No one could ever prove to him that machines did not have souls.

  "The only difference between a machine and an animal is that the machine won't kick you. The only difference between a machine and a person is that a

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  machine will never give bitter tongue to pain the heart. I love my Betty," Peter John would say.

  This morning Betty did not love him. She would not move and she would not cough, and Peter John got out of the station wagon and lifted the hood. There was a white soapy substance on the carburetor. He tried to smell it. It was odorless. He took a piece of it in his fingertips. It felt waxy.

  But it crumbled. His fingertips stung a little bit, and he noticed that the pink pads turned just a shade whiter. Peter John was a black man, and he felt God had made him black so that the sun could kiss him without harm. Peter John did not yell of pride in his blackness or hold workshops on maintaining his blackness; he just wanted to be black for the rest of his life because that was what he was. And he reasoned that if this waxy substance could cause the pink pads of the underside of his hands to turn white, then it might do the same thing to the rest of his body, and he did not want that.

  So he immediately phoned for an appointment with the doctor in Marigot, the French part of the island. He decided to use his friend's Chevrole
t to drive there.

  But that too would not start, and it too had the white substance in the carburetor. And so did another friend's Peugot.

  Peter John reasoned that if it were in the carburetors, it might have come through the gas. So he opened the gas tank of Betty, and there was a small explosion of white waxy material that splashed all over him. The material had been compressed somehow in the gas tank, and Peter John wondered who would do such a nasty trick to such nice cars.

  He telephoned the bus company that ran through the island. But no one answered, strangely enough, and he decided to hitchhike. He had heard from tourists that in America, hitchhiking took a long time because many cars would pass up people, especially black people. But Peter John knew the people of St. Maar-

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  ten's were nicer than that. He never had trouble hitchhiking, and he never passed up people, either.

  But this morning no cars were on the road, as he walked.

  He walked past the large, sprawling acres of the Puressence Laboratory, and there he saw, high on the hill, a few very tiny cars chugging around, spilling off a purple exhaust. He had never seen an exhaust like that, but even down on the road beneath the laboratory's high hill, he could smell its bitter odor. It made breathing hard, even at this great distance.

  He saw cars on the road, but none of them were moving. A few had popped their gas caps, and the white substance that he thought someone had dumped into his car in a prank was spilling out of the other cars. One gas station was a mound of white wax with the pumps and the concrete they had been set into lying back on their sides.

  Peter John was now flecked with little white spots where the white substance had touched him, and the spots stung—not greatly but like an annoying mosquito.

  His doctor was a Dutchman who had married a Frenchwoman and decided to settle on the French side of the divided island. He had treated Peter John's entire family.

  John had lost three of his eight children. He attributed that to God's will. But he still had five of the eight. He attributed that to his doctor's skill. Peter John was generally a very happy man. He was also considered "that fool Peter John" by many, including his doctor.

  "Excuse me, doctor," he said after his long walk, "but a strange substance attacked my car and is now attacking me." He pointed to the painful white spots on his rich black skin.